The Big Red One
Samuel Fuller's valedictory war picture, The Big Red One follows the First Infantry Division from Africa to Europe during the years 1942 through 1945. Lee Marvin avoids cliche in his portrayal of the division sergeant; he's tough and experienced, to be sure, but he takes on his job with cool professionalism rather than Hollywood bravado. Based on Fuller's own experiences, the film is a loosely constructed series of anecdotes. Some of these are well-staged but unremarkable, but others--an insane asylum under bombardment while the inmates applaud, a climactic vignette in which a very young concentration camp internee dies while a friendly soldier plays piggy-back with the boy--remain with the viewer long after the final credits have faded. Alternating between beauty and brutality, The Big Red One would have done better at the box-office a few years later, when a surfeit of successful war pictures had eliminated the negative depiction of soldiers fostered by Vietnam-era propaganda.
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